Database Management

Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMSs) continue to do the heavy lifting in data management, while newer database management systems are taking on prominent roles as well. NoSQL database systems such as Key-Value, Column Family, Graph, and Document databases, are gaining acceptance due to their ability to handle unstructured and semi-structured data. MultiValue, sometimes called the fifth NoSQL database, is also a well-established database management technology which continues to evolve to address new enterprise requirements.

Database Management Articles

With the increased merging of disparate core business systems in the enterprise—as well as the emergence of additional systems in the form of enterprise resource management, customer relationship management, hierarchical storage strategies, and other business-driven initiatives—many companies today find themselves moving mountains of data on a daily basis.

Ingres Corporation, an open source database management company, and the Government of Jordan announced today that they have joined forces to promote and drive open source adoption. Ingres and the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology of Jordan (MOICT) have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to achieve the widespread use of information technology and communication, particularly open source technology from Ingres, throughout the local software infrastructure in Jordan.

My whole career has been based on managing data and producing information and, as such, I am intrigued with the issue of information overload - or the perception that there is too much information. A former boss called me an information bottom-feeder because I always seemed to have a nugget of information or two that applied to her projects and quests. You see, I'm of the opinion that you can never have enough information - at least regarding those things you care about.

The process for designing a database that supports the operational functions of an organization begins with simple understanding. The data architect or modeler needs to obtain a working knowledge of the language comprising the universe of discourse for the solution. This awareness is gathered through many activities, such as talking with the people currently doing the work, sitting with them and watching how they do their tasks, reading over existing training manuals or standard operation procedures. The designer is best served when figuratively walking a mile in the shoes of the future application users. The more that the designer knows about the user needs and goals, the better able the designer is to definitively craft a data model supporting user tasks.

I was once asked what I thought Microsoft's overall product trajectory for SQL Server was, in light of Oracle's rather obvious trajectory of acquiring multiple application vendors who will, in turn, deploy more and more of their applications to the Oracle database platform. To be honest, I had a little difficulty perceiving a clear and concise strategy statement for the sort of work going on in Redmond. I could see a lot of great features being developed. And I knew the SQL Server development team had developed a lot of new "plumbing" with each new release - features like Service Broker and Extended Events and exponentially more robust capabilities in the Analysis Services product lines. But the strategy itself was veiled and, since Microsoft wasn't explicitly telling us what the grand strategy was, I had difficulty putting my finger on it.

Ashwood Computer, Inc., which specializes in MultiValue database technology, and Wynne Systems, Inc., a provider of business intelligence software, have formed a partnership to offer Wynne Systems' InfoManager business intelligence software to the MV community. According to the vendors, the new partnership will enable Ashwood to provide a high quality software as a service (SaaS) BI product to the MultiValue community while leveraging Ashwood's strong services capability.

Revelation Software is currently working on OpenInsight for TigerLogic D3. "Just as we have OpenInsight for U2, we will have OpenInsight for D3. Eventually, we hope that OpenInsight becomes a front-end graphical development to the D3 environnment," explains Robert Catalano, director of sales for Revelation. The new product came about after Mike Ruane, Revelation's president and CEO, attended TigerLogic's first user conference in many years in early November. "Many of their users are still using green screen technology or if they are doing it with a graphical front end, it is something like Java, where the skill set just isn't what they have. With the addition of OpenInsight as a front end to D3, they gain the ability to use the same skill set that they have right now, and they get to create a graphical front end to the database that they already have."

With the increased merging of disparate core business systems in the enterprise - as well as the emergence of additional systems in the form of enterprise resource management, customer relationship management, hierarchical storage strategies, and other business-driven initiatives - many companies today find themselves moving mountains of data on a daily basis. Business intelligence (BI) initiatives in particular typically rely on data warehousing strategies to provide critical information and reports to management in support of business decisions. Such strategies often require the timely transfer of enormous amounts of data from line-of-business systems. Too much time taken in data transfer can adversely impact a company's agility and could mean lost windows of business opportunities. It can also encroach on processing resources better devoted to core business applications.

Virtual Bridges has introduced the newest version of its virtual desktop infrastructure suite with the release of Virtual Bridges' VERDE 3.0 software. Key new features in VERDE 3.0 include full support for Microsoft Windows 7 clients; VERDE Cloud Branch support, which provides the ability to replicate centrally-managed gold master images to remote sites, eliminating WAN latency; VERDE LEAF (Live Environment Accessible Format) technology, which allows any computer to be turned into a thin client with VDI and telephony integrated; enhanced clustering, enabling management of multiple virtual machines per user; and integrated VOIP integration for Skype support built into the SMART client. VERDE 3.0 reaches out to the Mac community by providing access to Windows and Linux virtual desktop sessions from Mac clients. Mac users can now participate in VDI deployments together with Windows and Linux access points.

Oracle Corporation announced fiscal 2010 Q2 results in the latter half of December and took the opportunity to mention that the company expects the European Commission to approve its acquisition of Sun this month. "We expect the European Commission to unconditionally clear the acquisition of Sun in January," noted Oracle president Safra Catz. "I want to thank all of our customers for the overwhelming support they have given us during this process."

Oracle has acquired Silver Creek Systems, Inc., a provider of product data quality solutions. Silver Creek's DataLens product data quality solution is designed to simplify complex product descriptions commonly found in many industries, enabling enterprises to more accurately manage product data. "Lack of standardized product data continues to be a challenge for many enterprises," says Hasan Rizvi, senior vice president, Oracle Fusion Middleware Product Development. "With the addition of Silver Creek, Oracle is extending its industry leading data integration offering with complementary solutions to enhance product data quality and help customers get more accurate and consistent product data for use across their enterprise."

Sybase, Inc. today announced that its IQ 15.1 column-based analytics server, working with the IBM Power 595 system and running the AIX 6L version 6.1 Operating System, achieved the best overall performance result currently published among all non-clustered systems for the TPC-H benchmark at the 3TB scale factor . In addition, the Sybase and IBM solution also recorded the best current overall price/performance result among non-clustered systems that deliver over 100,000 QphH for the TPC-H benchmark at the 3TB scale factor .

The past year has been a challenging one for businesses as well as user groups alike. Yet, ISUG which serves the Sybase user community by acting as an information channel, an advocate for user issues, and as a force that helps to determine the product directions of Sybase, has offered new services and taken innovative approaches to provide training to its members. 5 Minute Briefing: Sybase talks with Mike Harrold, executive director of ISUG, about what ISUG is doing to support its members and what the user group hopes to accomplish in the year ahead.

Ian Abramson, president of the Independent Oracle Users Group, traveled to Brussels last week in order to present the IOUG position on the pending acquisition of Sun by Oracle to the European Union's Competition Committee. Abramson was asked by Oracle, on behalf of the IOUG, to be a part of the company's presentation to the EU. Upon arriving in Brussels, it was determined that since the IOUG and the UKOUG (represented by chairman Ronin Miles), were both there that they should combine statements, according to Abramson.

Quest Software, a leading provider of management software for databases and applications, recently announced the availability of several new features in Toad for Oracle. Toad for Oracle is a comprehensive tool for database development and administration that enables DBAs to perform daily tasks efficiently and accurately. Some of the key new features in the newest version include the addition of Toad Data Modeler at no additional cost, predictive diagnostics in Toad DBA Suite for Oracle, and support for Oracle 11gR2.

Continuent, Inc., a provider of software solutions for continuous data availability, advanced database replication, backup, and database performance scalability, recently announced the availability of Continuent Tungsten 1.2. Tungsten 1.2 Community Edition is available free of charge, while customers who want more advanced features and on-call technical support are encouraged to purchase the commercial Tungsten Enterprise 1.2 edition.

Sentrigo, Inc., a provider of database security software, has released the latest version of its flagship product, the Hedgehog Enterprise database activity monitoring and intrusion prevention solution, for leading database management systems. The new version incorporates features that allow for easier and faster deployment of highly customized security and audit policies aimed at protecting sensitive information so that organizations can meet their risk and compliance requirements.

Revelation Software is currently working on OpenInsight for TigerLogic D3. "Just as we have OpenInsight for U2, we will have OpenInsight for D3. Eventually, we hope that OpenInsight becomes a front-end graphical development to the D3 environnment," explains Robert Catalano, director of sales for Revelation. The new product came about after Mike Ruane, Revelation's president and CEO, attended TigerLogic's first user conference in many years in early November.

Rocket Software completed the purchase of the UniData and UniVerse Servers and Tools assets from IBM earlier this year. In the December issue of Database Trends and Applications, Susie Siegesmund, now vice president and general manager for the U2 brand under Rocket, talks about why the timing was right for this move and what U2 customers and partners can expect under the new ownership. Here, an excerpt of that interview, which was conducted just after the acquisition closed.

SteelEye Technology, Inc., a provider of business continuity and disaster recovery solutions for multi-vendor IT infrastructures, yesterday announced it has formed a sales partnership with EnterpriseDB, which provides enterprise-class products and services based on the PostgreSQL open source database. Under terms of the agreement, EnterpriseDB will offer SteelEye's business continuity and data replication solutions as value-added options within its Postgres Plus product line. EnterpriseDB will provide its customers with a "one-stop shop" for the SteelEye solutions, which include SteelEye LifeKeeper for Linux and SteelEye Data Replication for Linux.

Quest Software, a leading provider of management software for databases and applications, recently announced the availability of several new features in Toad for Oracle. Toad for Oracle is a comprehensive tool for database development and administration that enables DBAs to perform daily tasks efficiently and accurately. Some of the key new features in the newest version include the addition of Toad Data Modeler at no additional cost, predictive diagnostics in Toad DBA Suite for Oracle, and support for Oracle 11gR2.

Zmanda, a provider of open source backup and recovery software, has announced Zmanda Backup Appliance (ZBA), a pre-configured virtual backup server powered by SUSE Linux Enterprise Server which the vendor says runs on VMware Server, vSphere4, ESX, and ESXi. ZBA is intended to enable IT organizations to install a backup and recovery solution for heterogeneous desktops and servers, and backs up data to local disks, tape drives or clouds. Zmanda developed the ZBA solution as part of the SUSE Appliance Program, a business and technology program that was created to help ISVs build, configure and go to market with software and virtual appliances.

In composing a data model, the structures are put together thoughtfully and with intention. Data structures emerge from the application of semantics germane to the universe-of-discourse and filtered through the rules of normalization. Each table expresses meaning, with columns that are self-evident. The best models reduce the data items within the covered subject area into obvious arrangements. However, this simplicity often confuses observers, persuading many that modeling itself must therefore be a simple task. DBMS tools often incorporate wizards that facilitate the quick definition of tables which are then immediately created within the chosen database. These tools enable the developer to build tables in the blink of an eye. At times some prototypes are approached in this fashion, and while this provides for placeholders, such slapped-up table structures are insufficient for an industrial strength solution. Under these instant-table setups, developers often have no problem reworking large sections of code for minor changes, or misusing data elements to mean many things while making the determination of meanings at a specific point-in-time less clear. Unaware of these less-than-stellar consequences, users become confused; they often wonder why modeling tasks should ever need to be done because the proof of concept worked, didn't it?

Listen to a group of database professionals talk for awhile and someone will eventually bring up the topic of data deduplication. Data deduplication is a means to eliminate redundant data, either through hardware or software technologies. To illustrate, imagine you've drafted a new project plan and sent it to five teammates asking for input. That single file has now been reproduced, in identical bits and bytes, on a total of six computers. If everyone's email inbox is backed up every night, that's another six copies backed up on the email backup server. Through data deduplication technology, only a single instance of your project plan would be backed up, and all other instances of the identical file would simply be tiny on-disk pointers to the original.

As per my regular custom, this final DBA Corner column of the year is a review of the most significant data and database-related events of the year. Of course, to meet my deadlines, it is October 2009 as I write this, so please excuse any significant news that may have happened late in the year!

Rocket Software recently completed the purchase of the UniData and UniVerse Servers and Tools assets from IBM. Susie Siegesmund, now vice president and general manager for the U2 brand under Rocket, talks with Database Trends and Applications about why the timing was right for this move and what U2 customers and partners can expect under the new ownership.

Ian Abramson, president of the Independent Oracle Users Group, is traveling to Belgium in order to present the IOUG position on the pending acquisition of Sun by Oracle to the European Union's Competition Committee. Abramson, who will arrive in Brussels on Wednesday, was asked by Oracle, on behalf of the IOUG, to be a part of the company's presentation this week to the EU.

Oracle has announced the availability of Oracle Audit Vault Release 10.2.3.2, including key new reporting and alerting capabilities that streamline and help reduce the cost of the database audit process. To help ensure that the new Oracle Audit Vault entitlements and compliance-specific reports contain the information needed to pass real-world database audits, Oracle consulted with IT auditors, notes Vipin Samar, vice president of database security, Oracle. "This new release of Oracle Audit Vault will allow organizations to further automate their database activity monitoring and auditing processes, reducing the overall cost of meeting regulatory requirements and securing critical data."

Infobright, an open source data warehousing company, and Talend, an open source data integration company, have announced the availability of two integrated virtual machines for data warehousing and business intelligence. The first virtual machine combines the Infobright Community Edition analytic database with the Talend data integration tool, Talend Open Studio. The second virtual machine bundles these same two products with Jaspersoft's open source report server, JasperServer Community Edition, to deliver an end-to-end business intelligence solution.

Calpont Corporation is a database software company that provides column-oriented technology optimized to handle analytics, business intelligence and read-intensive application deployments. Recently, Calpont announced the availability of its open source database software, InfiniDB Community Edition. Enabled via MySQL and purpose-built for an analytic workload with column-oriented technology at its core, InfiniDB Community Edition delivers a full-feature scale-up solution that supports the rapidly increasing demand for open source analytics databases solutions.

Ntirety has launched a new, entry-level database service plan that offers 24x7 crash alerts and troubleshooting to quickly get businesses and databases back up and running, along with continuous backup monitoring and extensive reporting services. The new service plan is called NsureDB and delivers immediate alerts of down databases and dispatches Ntirety's experts to quickly remedy the problem.

Continuent, Inc., a provider of software solutions for continuous data availability, advanced database replication, backup, and database performance scalability, recently announced the availability of Continuent Tungsten 1.2. Tungsten 1.2 Community Edition is available free of charge, while customers who want more advanced features and on-call technical support are encouraged to purchase the commercial Tungsten Enterprise 1.2 edition.

Altova has announced the availability of Version 2010 of the Altova MissionKit, an integrated suite of XML, database, and UML tools. Version 2010 delivers a large number of new features across the product line for XML editing, data mapping, visual stylesheet designing, UML modeling, database schema analysis, and comparing and merging XML and database content.

Idera, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and leading provider of management and administration solutions for Microsoft SQL Server, recently announced SQL virtual database, a new product for accessing and extracting data from SQL Server backup files.

SharePoint360 recently announced that it has been accepted into a Microsoft early adoption program for new upcoming business intelligence products. While early adoption programs span many technologies and generally only engage Microsoft customers, SharePoint360 says it was selected as a result of its work in highlighting Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 within Microsoft SharePoint Server.

Panorama Software, a provider of proactive Business Intelligence (BI) solutions, has announced its plans for the next release of its flagship product suite NovaView. Panorama's next release will extend its Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services support to natively support Microsoft's new PowerPivot technology (formerly known as Project Gemini). SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) is Microsoft's online analytical processing (OLAP) technology, and PowerPivot is the name for Microsoft's next major update to SSAS.

The pervasive nature of data continues unabated, leaving organizations more awash in data than ever before. Technology has enabled the access and leveraging of information to heights undreamed of a generation ago. Between corporate dashboards and internet Googling, vast quantities of information are truly at one's finger tips. Data-driven, domain-driven, model-driven … the data itself is a force to be met and managed. When managed well, users never explicitly think about the databases that persist all that data.

If you've read the IT press at all these days, you know that SQL Injection (SI) attacks are very common and can be devastatingly effective. In fact, SI attacks-equally easy to execute against Oracle, MySQL, IBM DB2, or Microsoft SQL Server-are among the most common hacks on the Internet today. If a web application runs a relational database on the backend, it can be subject to an SI attack, which ironically, is among the easiest web hacks to prevent.